[…] For the time being, then, it appears that the best evidence supports Romney’s story that (a) he held onto his titles in order to maintain leverage during his severance negotiations, and (b) was involved very little with the operation of Bain after he left. He probably wasn’t completely disengaged (the AP story says his meetings were “mostly” about severance), but it does sound as though he had only minimal operational contact.Whether he should be held morally accountable for Bain’s actions as long as he held the CEO title is a whole different question. But substantively, probably not.
This is what drives people up the wall about Drum. In one hand, he has a single named source and one unnamed “legal expert” who say that Romney stayed on as CEO after 1999 to handle his own severance. On the other hand, we have a bunch of SEC filings and press releases saying Romney was the CEO during that period, along with some slippery disingenuous spin from the Romney campaign. Even the mythical disinterested skeptic would have to say that it “sounds like” Romney needs to explain himself further so we can better understand just who the hell was running Bain during that period. But not Drum – his incredibly well-attuned ear thinks it has heard enough. Why?
Is it because some kind of statute of limitations on watching a Republican squirm while telling lies has been reached, and only the wrong kind of person would want to see more self-inflicted suffering? Is it because the screeching and moaning from the right about Bain–noise that indicates that the attack is working, as far as I’m concerned–is convincing Drum? I don’t get it, but the ball on Bain, as well as on tax returns, is in Romney’s court and until he coughs up some verifiable information, there’s no reason that any journalist or pundit should do anything but point out that we’re still waiting.
amk
What ‘best evidence’ kevin?
Walker
Kevin was a “Bain ads will hurt Obama” concern troll from the beginning. He is well past his sell-by date.
Bobby Thomson
What
Alan ColmesKevin Drum fails to acknowledge is that it sounds as though Willard didn’t have a lot of operational responsibility at any time, including before 1999. He also completely ignores Rmoney’s repeated admissions that he attended Staples board meetings. Staples was a Bain portfolio company, so the representation that he was not involved in any way with portfolio companies was a lie. And if he lied about that, what else did he lie about.The above is unfair to Colmes, who finally threw off his pet liberal status. Yeah, it took being sacked to do it, but he did it.
Gin & Tonic
He will never cough up anything. This story is dead.
DougMN
I read Drum so that I can know what POS waffling Dems in the House and Senate are thinking.
Walker
The whole “operational responsibility” stuff is goalpost moving of the highest order. The fact that Kevin has accepted this narrative is inexcusable.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@DougMN: In lieu of a ‘like’ button: this.
CardinalRed
IOKIYAR
Where’s the tax returns Willard?
mattH
Drum drives me nuts. I’ve been reading him since his Calpundit days. He can go months without posting something idiotic, then something like this comes up, and it’ll be more and more “contrarian” crap for the next 3 months cropping up in his posts. It’s his schtick as far as I can tell. It still makes me wonder why Mother Jones lured him away from Washington Monthly when they probably could have got someone soo much better, without trying. Hell, he said it was a better deal than what he had. Why are they wasting money on this man?
Califlander
@ DougMN
That’s the only possible reason to read Drum, and to be honest, it’s not good enough.
Bulworth
Who was the CEO of Bain from 1999-2002, if it wasn’t the dude whose name is on the SEC filings?
Walker
@mattH:
The best part of Mother Jones luring him away is that it launched Steve Benen to a wider audience.
General Stuck
So far, the person that matters most in this equation is twisting the shiv with aplomb and a shit eating grin that says no mercy for liars and brigands. The Kevin Drums of the left will need fluffy pillows for the fainting couch until election day. This go around, The Obama krew are taking no prisoners from the opposition.
penpen
Yup. I usually defend Drum around here, but this post of his was a stinker.
Adam C
It’s a sideshow anyway. How much guidance was Romney giving post-1999? More than zero. How much did Bain change direction post-1999? Pretty much zero.
It was the company he set up acting in the same way it always had with his name on the letterhead. He can wear it.
jrg
He got paid didn’t he?
the Conster
Kevin Drum can bite me, but who cares what he thinks anyway? Mitt’s secrecy about absolutely everything in his past is the issue and isn’t going away, because Obama will be asking the same questions over and over – WHAT IS HE HIDING? That’s the whole ball game right there. By the time October rolls around, the whole country will be wondering what’s in those tax returns, what was on the wiped hard drives, and what was in those destroyed Olympic records. The press may not want to ask, but as long as Obama keeps asking they’ll have to keep talking about it.
MattF
Drum has to keep his thumb-sucker cred. Ugly, but that’s the way it is. WRT the actual point in question, Romney has done everything in his power to keep the relevant information private. Is he hiding something? I’d suspect so, but I’m a partisan-hack-BJ-commenter.
some guy
Concern trolls can be as concerned as they want, but the SEC filings and the FEC filings are not going away. He lied to one or the other, and that is the real question here. Maybe if he released his tax returns we could clear this all up, but until then every Obama supporter should open every conversation with “Why is Romney hiding his tax returns?”
Villago Delenda Est
Drum is an idiot.
Rmoney is a lying sack of shit. There is no question of that. You DO NOT commit perjury on a piece of fucking paper like that. You just don’t. Not if you have a fucking soupcon of integrity.
Which Rmoney does not have. He may have gazillions of pictures of George Washington, but he doesn’t have a fucking Abe Lincoln on a coin’s worth of integrity.
Which means that Drum is still a fucking idiot.
Mike E
This is why we can’t have nice things, or, anything, for that matter.
cat48
Meanwhile, in GOP Fringe world, a new Birther type Ad. It demands the original birth certificate, transcripts from Columbia & Harvard & asks why the prez has a Massachusetts’ Social Security Number. The wingnuts never give up!
TooManyDans
The title “Chief Executive Officer” was invented to designate “guy who is ultimately responsible for everything.” To me, saying “I wasn’t really doing anything” over a 3-year period you were designated as CEO opens up at least three whole other, really effective, lines of attack. The “wow, you really suck at stuff” angle, the “holy crap, you got paid for that?” angle, and the “my god, you really don’t take responsibility for anything, do you?” angle.
Increase Mather
Love the way Drum moves the bar (“involved very little,” “wasn’t completely disengaged, but”).
Isn’t the “leverage” argument frustrating enough? That’s Romney’s world I suppose, but not mine. I couldn’t get paid six figures to do very little.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Walker: Bingo. And this kind of writing is exactly what drives me right round the twist about Drum. Cat blogging cannot compensate for this kind of hackery.
cmorenc
@Adam C:
Yes, indeed you’re preaching to the choir. The problem is how to not allow the MSM’s lazy attention to be distracted and obfuscated; unfortunately, a side-effect of the Colorado massacre was that it came along precisely at the moment the true extent of Romney’s post-1999 entanglement with Bain was starting to get reinforcing traction in the MSM and each effort by Romney to extract himself was only causing him to sink in deeper.
Switching for the moment to the actual substantive truth of the matter, rather than MSM coverage of it, one of the most potent elements in Romney’s past reinforcing his likely involvement in the cutthroat vulture/outsourcing culture of Bain with respect to acquired companies is the “haircut” incident Romney led back when he was at that prep school in Michigan, which revealed the true sociopathic nature at the core of the man he grew up to be.
kdaug
Oh, Romney. You’re just the gift that keeps on giving.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/26/mitt-romney-london-olympic-games
Cookie-gate 2.0? Srsly?
Mitt, you really got to learn how keep your mouth shut.
Dolt.
[email protected]
I looked up ‘wishy-washy’ in the dictionary and found a photo of Drum.
Villago Delenda Est
@cmorenc:
You see, that massacre in Colorado WAS a false flag operation! To distract the MSM from Rmoney’s squirming!
/wingnut from mirror universe
Davis X. Machina
You realize none of this matters….USA Today poll from yesterday:
This is America, where money confers virtue. Think of it as the new Mandate of Heaven.
This nation is populated by peasants with internet access, and deserves a king. The reason for the persistence of the ancien regime is visible to this day, every day.
NancyDarling
“I have to tell you. This is Ann’s sport. I’m not even sure which day the sport goes on. She will get the chance to see it. I WILL NOT BE WATCHING THE EVENT. I hope her horse does well.”—Rmoney in an interview with Brian Williams yesterday. Emphasis mine.
I call BULL SHIT. And if it’s not bull shit, then shame on him for being such an ass of a husband that he does not deign to watch something that she obviously cares deeply about.
Bulworth
@Walker: This.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
This post by Kevin basically sums up why we keep losing: Anything that helps a conservative or GOPer is treated with the utmost credibility until proven wrong, especially by those so called ‘moderates’ and ‘centrists’, even those carrying a D by their name.
Anything that helps a liberal or a Dem is treated like the foulest of fucking lies in the history of forever, and even if proven right still gets treated like bargain basement shit, especially by said same moderates and centrists.
Fucking Kevin Drum…
patrick II
I read Drum every day. He is a brilliant analyst and explainer. When Bush was trying to screw Social Security Kevin was there with cogent writing and a few charts that explained better than anywhere else on the web the where’s and whys’ of the social security program.
Having said that, every once in a while I think someone hits him over the head with a frying pan just before he writes a post. And this is one of those times.
The SEC documents Romney signed weren’t just some end of the year status for Bain, The documents were directly related to nine Bain deals — with Pirod Holdings, VMM Merger Corp, ChipPAC Inc. Integrated Circuit Systems, and VisionCare, Inc. and three more.
From the Seattle Times:
Romney had a fiduciary interest (he was still negotiating his final pay — for three years) and we have signed acknowledgement of Mitt’s knowledge and acquiesence to these deals which means he had both a legal and fiduciary interest in these transactions.
If Mitt asserts “I know nothing”, then like Sargent Schultz, his assertion of deliberate ignorance rings hollow. He has both legal and fiduciary responsibilities whether he lived up to them or not. And knowing Mitt and the interest he has in getting paid, it is hard to believe he was not careful to check these deals to be sure they would make him more money. The legal stuff he probably just considers for the peons.
The Pale Scot
Sorry MM, I posted ur comment there, I should have asked first.
It so obvious Drum’s fishing for a WaPo gig.
NotMax
Dear Mr. Drum,
Follow. The. Money.
Bobby Thomson
@Davis X. Machina: Depends on how you ask the question. According to a Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Tuesday, 36% of registered voters said the Bain attacks caused them to view Rmoney less favorably. And 45% in a July 2012 Purple Strategies poll agreed with the statement: “I won’t vote for Mitt Romney because as CEO of Bain Capital he got rich outsourcing American jobs to China and India while putting his millions in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands.”
xian
@Davis X. Machina: poll the swing states where the Bain ads are running and get back to me.
xian
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Drum has always been a squish with blue dog (chamber of commerce division) leanings.
NCSteve
This post was officially the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as my allocation of my eyeball-seconds to web pages went and put Drum on the list of people whose opinions I can somehow struggle by without knowing each day.
To his credit, he somehow managed to say off that list longer than Greenwald and Sullivan. But that was probably just because he posts pictures of his cats periodically and pictures of cats are intrinsically more interesting that about 90% of the people who write stuff about politics on the Internet.
Spatula
@DougMN:
This.
amk
@the Conster: Yup. The issue is not going away despite the press covering mittbot’s a$$.
penpen
@patrick II: All of this.
hilts
OT
Get the popcorn, or whatever else, ready for these Debate Dates and Fuck Kevin Drum
First presidential debate: October 3, University of Denver, Colorado: Domestic issues, questions selected by moderator.
Vice presidential debate: October 11, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky: Domestic and foreign issues, questions selected by moderator.
Second presidential debate: October 16, Hofstra University, Hampstead, N.Y.: Town-hall meeting format with questions from undecided voters.
Third presidential debate: October 22, Lynn University, Boca Raton, Florida: Foreign issues, questions selected by moderator.
h/t http://www.shakesville.com/2012/07/cant-wait-i-can-wait.html
Nylund
I think it’s partly a matter of the fact that in this age of the 24 hour news cycle, the Bain/CEO issue is just so BORING for reporters to dwell on. It’s like, “Uggh! That again? Sure, there’s still no real answer, but come on! Hasn’t someone phrased something poorly recently or anything? Talking about gaffes taken out of context is so much more fun than reading SEC filings. And it takes less work.”
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: Hey, you know I was just fuckin around at O dark hundred!
burnspbesq
@Bulworth:
A player to be named later. Or maybe a future draft choice. Hard tone certain.
japa21
Here’s the thing. If Drum really went beyond this milquetoast statement he would have to, effectively, call Mitt a liar. We all know that Mitt is a liar, but in polite company, which Drum believes he is part of, that word isn’t used.
Davis X. Machina
@xian: It’s not the short-term electoral outcomes so much as the mind-set that bothers me.
jrg
@Davis X. Machina:
Wow.
Mitt Romney scores a significant advantage over President Obama when it comes to managing the economy, reducing the federal budget deficit and creating jobs
So, cut taxes, expand the military, don’t touch Medicare or Social Security… Profit!
It’s really unbelievable how stupid people are in this country. They fall for the same bullshit again and again and again, for decades.
Mike Lamb
Has it ever taken anyone 3 years to negotiate a severance package? Esp. in a closely held corporation?
burnspbesq
“”Hard to be certain.”
FYWP and your arbitrary and capricious edit function.
Davis X. Machina
@NCSteve: That would be the Kevin Drum whose multi-parter on voter suppression ran two weeks ago.
Corporate tool. Running in a mag indistinguishable from Forbes, too….
mattH
@Walker: Small consolation to Drum still being around, but yeah, I agree.
NotMax
If it’s not too much to ask, can we have an Open Thread?
Some of us are nodding off to beddy-bye.
Damn east coast elitists. :)
karen
How about David Korn? I think he’s been great with the news about Bain to begin with. He’s the main reason I read Mother Jones.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Davis X. Machina:
@jrg:
Seriously. We’ve had how long to see the fruits of supply-side, trickle-down, ‘fuck you I’ve got mine’ economics? The result being wider gulfs between the haves and have-nots, and the stagnation, if not outright decline, of most people’s real wages all for the sake of the 1%…
And still the majority of the country still come out and decide that ‘COMMIE COMMIE FUCKIN’ COMMIE BUSINESS HATER COMMIE!!!!!!!!!’ is a far more credible argument than anything else.
burnspbesq
OT: Betcha thought the health care litigation was over. Well, maybe not.
http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/07/new-challenge-to-the-health-mandates/
Rise, you zombie litigants.
cat48
Bad news for Mitt on those ITR’s; his summer home paper is having none of it!
The conservative New Hampshire Union Leader calls on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns:
“But there is no place for secrecy or, indeed, privacy in a Presidential campaign. If you want the job, you have to subject yourself to the scrutiny. You have to be prepared to stand and explain, indeed, justify, your actions. If they are legal, then so be it… Surely he could not have arrogantly believed that he could withstand any storm that developed by bluffing his way through it? If so, it hasn’t worked.”
“If Romney intends to win, he is going to have to make the tax forms public.”
uila
Drum had a post a few months back complaining about Dems referring to Romney as “Willard” instead of his preferred Mitt. He finds it rude, or something… Give me a fucking break, pal.
jrg
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: It’s because we keep borrowing money to pay for grannie McTeabagger’s Medicare.
Take that away, the “Job Creators! Magical gnomes pay for tax cuts, wheee!” horseshit disappears within a month.
I really wish we could stop talking about this as a “big government/small government” thing. The feds spend seven times as much on the elderly than the young. Seven fucking times. The reason so many geriatrics are “conservative” is because we give them the luxury.
Peter
@hilts: The first presidential debate, on domestic issues, is going to be in Denver, Colorado? Wow, that should be…interesting.
Villago Delenda Est
@Raven:
Oh, OK.
Those outfits really give me the willies. The American Legion is notorious for its fascist leanings, the VFW less so, but they still seem to be pretty selective in what “veterans” they endorse for office. The number of those with Rs behind their names is to me quite interesting.
Like I said, Tammy Duckworth’s vet status doesn’t seem to register with them. Well, she looks funny and all, with two missing legs, you know…
jim filyaw
while willard (and drum) are hoping this story goes away, the repubs are busy with their voter suppression strategy. where do you think romney stands on that?
in re drum: talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight!
stratplayer
Lat month Drum went out of his way to exonerate Republicans of charges of hypocrisy on the individual mandate, so I guess he’s on a roll.
cat48
@kdaug:
Cameron’s Reply to Mitt via the press:
“We are holding an Olympic Games in one of the busiest, most active, bustling cities anywhere in the world. Of course it’s easier if you hold an Olympic Games in the middle of nowhere.”
— British Prime Minister David Cameron, quoted by the Daily Telegraph, slapping back at suggestions from Mitt Romney that Britain wasn’t prepared for the 2012 Olympic games.
Bobby Thomson
@cat48: That’s called an own goooooooooooooooooooooooooallllllllllllll!
Tommybones
The idea that Romney wouldn’t be 100% aware of every move Bain made post 1999, considering he was sole Owner, shareholder and CEO is a concept any rational human being should reject out-of-hand.
We need PROOF that he actually cared about what HIS company was doing? Really? I mean, are we in the twilight zone, or what? I can’t even believe this is a debate.
amk
twitterdom
Looks like Barack Obama is going to have to go on an real apology tour for Mitt Romney
amk
Reporters aren’t allowed to photograph Romney’s dressage horse or interview trainers at the Olympics
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/photos-of-romneys-olympian-horse.html
Pillsy
Reading Kevin Drum’s blog for the horse race analysis is like going to a strip club for the buffet.
Davis X. Machina
@cat48: I believe he was referring to Utah…
catclub
@Califlander: catblogging
Rafer Janders
Oh, for fuck’s sake. No matter what else he was, Romney was 100% sole shareholder during this entire time. This means that there was nothing — nothing — that happened at Bain Capital that did not have his approval, either explicit or implicit, because he had sole authority to hire and fire every individual there, and he had final say-so over every transaction they got involved in. He was the 100% legal owner of the entire operation.
And let’s not even get into the question of whether Romney, a notorious micro-manager and control freak, would ever really have been hands-off with a company that represented most of his wealth and social position.
Matt McIrvin
Seems to me this is a lose-lose for Romney. Suppose he did have no operational responsibility for a company of which he was the owner and CEO. What does that say? It says that people as rich as Mitt Romney live in a strange twilight world that works by different rules from the one you and I live in. It says he may be telling the truth, but, damn, what a truth.
TG Chicago
Perhaps the worst part of this is that it feeds into the idea that when something goes wrong among the elites, nobody is responsible.
Romney was kinda CEO (enough to make at least a 6-figure salary) but kinda not (not in the sense that he should be responsible for any negative consequences). Heads he wins, tails we lose.
No progressive should ever buy into this mindset. So why is Drum?
LanceThruster
Well, just like Will-lie-ard said on NBC the other night, “The American people don’t really care about this.”
Unfortunately, in some respects, this is pretty much as close to the truth as the MittWit can get.
Zach
What’s oddest about this is that the people who should actually be up in arms are folks who invested in Bain-managed funds between 1999 and mid-2001. They were reassured by Romney’s leadership position in a time of financial turmoil (recession, dot com bust, etc) because of his experience fixing things at Bain & Co. before starting Bain Capital. If Romney’s not lying now, then he was lying to his investors ca. 2000 and I’m not a lawyer but I’d think they’d start suing him.
LanceThruster
Hmmm, maybe to “capitalize” on the “Rmoney” meme,it should be expanded to Wil-LIE-ard-$$$.
Raven
@Villago Delenda Est: I fucking hate both of em with a passion.
Davis X. Machina
@japa21:
The Kevin Drum Rapid Response Team swings into action...
amk
@Davis X. Machina:
The CD burns
Sloegin
Kevin Drum (like a lot of enlightened folks) doesn’t believe evil exists, at least not in upper class white ‘murika.
Bush and Cheney murder hundreds of thousands with their actions, but hey, they aren’t, you know… eeeevil.
Mitt destroyed lives, fortunes, communities for his own selfish gain, but really now. Call that evil? That’s just beyond the pale.
They get confused when confronted with evil. They can’t understand it when they confront it, and refuse to give it a proper name. That would be medieval thinking. Not modern, not enlightened, no sir.
FlipYrWhig
The whole point of being a high-level business executive, it seems to me, is that you have ULTIMATE responsibility for what the business does, even if you do not have PROXIMATE responsibility for every last thing. What’s the evidence that Romney was any more immediately, operationally responsible for Bain business _before_ 1999? What proves he was ever anything more than a ceremonial glad-handing smiley face? And yet he takes credit for all that stuff. It’s bullshit, and everyone knows it’s bullshit, and yet intelligent people keep choosing to fall for it.
Heliopause
See, this is where you keep going off the rails. You waste this space to berate Kevin Drum for insufficient loyalty when in fact he’s presenting you with yet another golden opportunity. So the excuse is that Romney was protecting his severance? Great! That means Romney was flying to Massachusetts several times a year for the sole purpose of protecting the bazillion dollars he was going to get for putting his name on the letterhead. How many voters can relate to that, do you think? Pro tip: Romney’s own explanations are as bad for him as the conspiracy theory you’re hoping materializes.
El Cid
@Heliopause: The beautiful thing is that every explanation Romney gives for anything makes it all worse. Every time. Every time there’s a ‘clarification’ or denial or whatever, it all ends up looking even worse.